war to the knife
war to the knife noun: mortal combat; fighting to the death.
Noun
war to the knife (countable and uncountable, plural wars to the knife)
- Mortal combat; fighting to the death.
- And not civil war as we knew it in England and you knew it in America, waged within certain limits of decency and humanity by disciplined forces, but civil war to the knife, altogether ferocious and anarchical, as if hell itself were let loose, as if a beautiful face were suddenly distorted with...1938 March, Ian D[uncan] Colvin, “The Case for Franco”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 161, number 3, Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 28 Oct...
- By April [Amos] Kendall, [William B.] Lewis, and the others of the inner circle had dropped their subscriptions to the Telegraph, and it was indeed war to the knife.1944, Charles M[aurice] Wiltse, John C. Calhoun: Nullifier, 1829–1839, Indianapolis, I.N.; New York, N.Y.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., pages 99–100
Forms of war to the knife
| plural | wars to the knife |
|---|
Origin of war to the knife
Calque of Spanish guerra al cuchillo (“extremely fierce or relentless war”).
Questions about war to the knife
- What does war to the knife mean?
- War to the knife means mortal combat; fighting to the death.
- What part of speech is war to the knife?
- War to the knife is a noun.
- What is the plural of war to the knife?
- The plural of war to the knife is wars to the knife.
Words near war to the knife in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: war to the knife (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “war to the knife.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/war_to_the_knife. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.